Nissan’s divorce with the DeltaWing prototype is getting messy. Don Panoz and his race team, DeltaWing Racing Cars, are suing the automaker and the car’s designer, Ben Bowlby, for making an alleged clone that could see production in a few years. According to Automotive News, which obtained a copy of the lawsuit filed in a Georgia county court near the company’s headquarters, Panoz claims the right to the DeltaWing’s fighter-jet shape and spent “tens of millions of dollars” in its development. The civil case, which was filed on November 22, is “a cease-and-desist order that would prevent the company from displaying, racing, or selling cars with such a design.”

Allegedly using that design is the Nissan BladeGlider, an open-air electric concept that debuted at the Tokyo auto show last month, and which Nissan intends to build as a road car. It’s no surprise to see the slender car ape the DeltaWing because Bowlby, Nissan’s director of motorsport innovation, did it himself.

Nissan wouldn’t comment on the litigation, and Panoz issued a statement saying, “We are disappointed that we must take such action against Nissan regarding violations of our designs and intellectual property.” It’s still unclear how much of the DeltaWing design is legally protected, or if Bowlby was in his right to create similar designs based on the one Panoz paid to license.

DeltaWing Race Car

Bowlby began work on the DeltaWing in 2009 as an IndyCar replacement while working for race-team owner Chip Ganassi, but his radical idea—a car with the skinny head of a top-fuel dragster and the super-wide tail of a Le Mans prototype—was rejected by the sport after its debut at the 2010 Chicago auto show. But this wasn’t a Nikola Tesla moment. In June 2011, Bowlby got the green light from Panoz and builder Dan Gurney to enter the DeltaWing in the 2012 24 Hours of Le Mans. Nissan signed up to supply the car’s 1.6-liter four-cylinder engine in March of that year, and after zero wins and two highly publicized crashes, the Japanese marque quit a year later. Sometime between the car’s first Le Mans entry and Nissan’s exit this past March, Bowlby left to work for Nissan. By June, the company unveiled his first DeltaWing spinoff, the ZEOD RC, and showed the first photos of his second, the BladeGlider, in early November.

While Panoz and his DeltaWing team have yet to win a race—they scored their first podium finish at Monterey in May—the car’s ultralight arrow shape, impressive speed, and low fuel consumption is looking more conceivable with each passing event. We’ll have to wait and see how it performs in court.